In article <1992Jul30.211132.20101@cc.umontreal.ca> duperval@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Duperval Laurent) writes:
I couldn't for the life of me remember when it all happened, and I don't
keep a diary, so I can't give you any exact dates for when linux "was
born". But I did start to wonder, so I started ftp'ing around for
archives of the comp.os.minix group (where I announced it), and this is
what I came up with (with some editing).
This is just a sentimental journey into some of the first posts
concerning linux, so you can happily press 'n' now if you actually
thought you'd get anything technical.
The project was obviously linux, so by July 3rd I had started to think
about actual user-level things: some of the device drivers were ready,
and the harddisk actually worked. Not too much else.
Just a success-report on porting gcc-1.40 to minix using the 1.37
version made by Alan W Black & co.
So I was clueless - had just learned about named pipes. Sue me. This
part of the post got a lot more response than the actual POSIX query,
but the query did lure out arl from the woodwork, and we mailed around
for a bit, resulting in the Linux subdirectory on nic.funet.fi.
Then, almost two months later, I actually had something working: I made
sources for version 0.01 available on nic sometimes around this time.
0.01 sources weren't actually runnable: they were just a token gesture
to arl who had probably started to despair about ever getting anything.
This next post must have been from just a couple of weeks before that
release.
Judging from the post, 0.01 wasn't actually out yet, but it's close. I'd
guess the first version went out in the middle of September -91. I got
some responses to this (most by mail, which I haven't saved), and I even
got a few mails asking to be beta-testers for linux.
After that just a few general answers to quesions on the net:
[ editors note: linux has in fact gotten more portable with newer
versions: there was a lot more assembly in the early versions. Not that
anybody in their right mind would try to port it even now ]
Well, obviously something worked on my machine: I doubt I had yet gotten
gcc to compile itself under linux (or I would have been too proud of it
not to mention it). Still before any release-date.
Then, October 5th, I seem to have released 0.02. As I already
mentioned, 0.01 didn't actually come with any binaries: it was just
source code for people interested in what linux looked like. Note the
lack of announcement for 0.01: I wasn't too proud of it, so I think I
only sent a note to everybody who had shown interest.
Well, it doesn't sound like much of a system, does it? It did work, and
some people even tried it out. There were several bad bugs (and there
was no floppy-driver, no VM, no nothing), and 0.02 wasn't really very
useable.
0.03 got released shortly thereafter (max 2-3 weeks was the time between
releases even back then), and 0.03 was pretty useable. The next version
was numbered 0.10, as things actually started to work pretty well. The
next post gives some idea of what had happened in two months more...
As you can see, 0.11 had already a small following. It wasn't much, but
it did work.
That was still standard in the next release.
I actually released a 0.11+VM version just before Christmas -91: I
didn't need it myself, but people were trying to compile the kernel in
2MB and failing, so I had to implement it. The 0.11+VM version was
available only to a small number of people that wanted to test it out:
I'm still surprised it worked as well as it did.
The early copyright was in fact much more restrictive than the GNU
copyleft: I didn't allow any money at all to change hands due to linux.
That changed with 0.12.
As you can see: 0.11 was actually stand-alone: I wrote the first
mkfs/fsck/fdisk programs for it, so that you didn't need minix any more
to set it up. Also, serial lines had been hard-coded to 2400bps, as that
was all I had.
Well, they are all there now: init/login didn't quite make it to 0.12,
and rename() was implemented as a patch somewhere between 0.12 and 0.95.
Symlinks were in 0.95, but named pipes didn't make it until 0.96.
Actually, 0.12 was out January 5th, and contained major corrections. It
was in fact a very stable kernel: it worked on a lot of new hardware,
and there was no need for patches for a long time. 0.12 was also the
kernel that "made it": that's when linux started to spread a lot faster.
Earlier kernel releases were very much only for hackers: 0.12 actually
worked quite well.
That's all I found for 1991 - maybe it answered some questions.
Linus
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